[dnissley]

You see the issue though with the approach you're advocating?

"Oh spoiler alert, you will actually feel like you are being more sadder after you started meditating.... enjoy the process"

So I'll start to not enjoy myself by becoming sadder, but I just need to enjoy it?

[HexDecOctBin]

Because the purpose of meditation is not to make you happy, it is to help you understand the Satya/Truth to help you see beyond the Maya/Illusion and lead you towards Moksha/Liberation (from Suffering/Dukkha if you are Buddhist, from Punarjanam/Reincarnation if you are Hindu). Of course, if you don't believe in any of that, then it is useless for you. Truth is supposed to make you sad, otherwise everyone will be looking for it.

Westerners just turn everything into a commercial product, look in this very thread -- some people felt a bit of relaxation and decided that they are now enlightened souls who have figured out the real deal without having to deal with the dirty Brown-skinned spirituality.

[__rito__]

When you practice meditation for some months (for some, a few weeks or years), you gain a piercing insight into the nature of reality, and you might find the reality much more darker and sadder than you previously thought.

But meditation will also teach you that these don't matter.

Couple that with the personal cathartic experience of your forcefully subdued gloom, sadness, worries, etc. resurfacing and making you more afraid/anxious. This happens after some days/one-two weeks.

But meditation teaches you to overcome them. After years, your sense of self will cease.

These are not trivial things, so you will do better having a learned, practicing guru and/or solid base in the Philosophy.

[russelldjimmy]

The issue isn’t with the approach. The issue is with the limitations of language.

I did a vipassana course a few years ago and have been meditating semi-regularly ever since. I’ve been through a few difficult times with my family since then (not materially, but emotionally). In those difficult times, my most deep traumas were triggered - sadness, rage, frustration, anxiety all came rushing out.

But because of the meditative practices, I had learned to “witness” these emotions rather than be completely consumed by then. In the meditative practices I follow, I’ve learned to completely sense my body and the result is that my attention has moved away from my thoughts (which are the source of most of our suffering) to bodily sensations. These resulted in situations which are something like, “Oh I’m feeling a lot of rage and sadness. My chest is feeling an intense, almost painful sensation. My breathing is heavy and fast.” Whereas normally I’d have thought, “I’M GOING TO RIP THIS F**ERS HEAD OFF!!”.

And guess what, when the power of the emotion is “seen” in this way… I began to enjoy it. Enjoying my sadness and anger.

EDIT: well these days, I realise I’ve been chasing that state ever since :) and now my challenge is to let go. I’ve certainly become a bit rusty since then, but I don’t give myself enough credit for how far I’ve come. The journey never ends! I guess one just takes life as it comes :))

[rendx]

> So I'll start to not enjoy myself by becoming sadder, but I just need to enjoy it?

Yes. I do enjoy sadness. Once you worked your way to enjoy it, it becomes cleansing in itself. It is not inherently unjoyful, it is that you are attributing lack of joy to it.

This is basically what "inner child work" is doing, or "demon feeding", to stay closer to buddhistic practices.

See also, for example, the "8 C's and 5 P's of Internal Family Systems", https://www.therapywithalessio.com/articles/self-in-ifs-ther... You can feel all of them (calm, curious, compassionate, connected, confident etc), AND anything else at the same time (sadness, overwhelm, fear, anger, etc).